


galvanism

by Elendraug



Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Canon-Typical Behavior, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss of Parent(s), Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:33:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21792298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elendraug/pseuds/Elendraug
Summary: a delicate balance.
Relationships: Amber/Seth (Metalocalypse), Charles Foster Offdensen & Pickles the Drummer, Nathan Explosion & Pickles the Drummer, Pickles the Drummer & Seth
Comments: 5
Kudos: 14
Collections: Genuary 2021





	galvanism

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in January of 2015 and for some reason I never posted it
> 
> special thanks to my pals who have talked with me about this show over the years ♥
> 
> ♫ [radiohead - like spinning plates](https://genius.com/Radiohead-like-spinning-plates-lyrics)

Nathan stands at the lectern, his shoulders broader than anyone else who’s ever led the congregation in song. He paws through the photocopies of photocopies stacked on the lectionary until he realizes the paper he needed was second from the top. He grunts into the microphone.

“Uhh. This one’s responsorial psalm-psalm forty-two.” He pauses. “Puh-salm? Salm. Puh-salm. Okay.” 

Seth, Amber, and Noah look up at him from the first pew, directly in front of the lectern. The entire church is silent. A woman seated at a piano looks on, her brow furrowed in concern. She plays a few notes, but stops when Nathan misses the cue. She folds her hands in her lap.

“Okay so uh, my soul is thirsting for God. The God of my life.” Nathan squints at the page; his glasses are back in Mordhaus. He pronounces capitalized _God_ with a very strong ‘G’. Nathan mumbles his way through the words, and Pickles thinks about recording—or failing to record—the complete works of Shakespeare. “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you O God. Huh. A deer...? Uhhhh, _response_. My soul thirsts for God for the living God when shall I come and behold the face of God. Response.”

Nathan looks up from the paper, looks to those gathered, and then looks to the priest. They stare at each other. There’s a long pause before Nathan asks, “Am I done?”

Someone else, some friend of the family, soon takes Nathan’s place at the lectern to handle the second reading.

“A reading from the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians.”

Nathan returns to his seat at the back of the church, at the end of the pew, next to Pickles. He glances at Pickles, though Nathan’s hair blocks his line of sight.

“Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

Nathan leans towards Pickles and speaks gruffly next to his shoulder. “I’m sorry about your mom.”

From the lectern: “The Word of the Lord.”

Everyone around them, in unison: “Thanks be to God.”

Pickles flexes his fingers against his kneecap.

Dethklok and their manager remain seated as the rest of the congregation files up to receive the Eucharist. Pickles resists the urge to let the kneeler in their pew crash to the ground, the way he’d let it drop when he was a kid and feeling petulant.

Toki makes a concerned comment about transubstantiation. Murderface scoffs that it’s ‘just bread’. Someone in the pew behind them gives him a nasty look.

After everyone has returned to their seats, Seth steps up to the lectern, dressed in the tuxedo from his wedding. Pickles recognizes the bloodstain that never came out of the lapel.

“My mother,” he begins, with a slurring Pickles can’t decide the origin of, “was a good woman. She took care of me and mine when she didn’t have to, not by a long shot. We were real close. I don’t think I’ve ever had deeper friendship in my f—” He ducks his head and presses his fist to his mouth. “...in my life, than with my mom. No offense babe.”

Amber gives him an inscrutable look that falls possibly somewhere between bafflement and sympathy.

“I don’t know too many people who are gonna let their kid stay at the house into his forties, you know? But she did that for me. I knew that no matter what, even when I was locked up, I knew I had a place to go when I got out. I’d’ve been homeless. She took good care of me. Ma took good care of me.”

Seth stops speaking for long enough that those gathered get restless. Amber tries to discreetly hand him a piece of paper, but gives up when he doesn’t take it after a minute of stretching her arm out. 

He looks up and past the rows of pews, up to the light streaming in from the large glass windows at the front of the church. Another long moment passes, and he lowers his gaze to seek out Pickles in the back of the room.

“Pickles. You wanna say something about mom? She’d be honored that Dethklok was here.”

Pickles knows she wouldn’t. He crosses his arms and sinks down into his seat until the wooden edge of the pew is digging into the back of his neck. “I got nothin’ to say,” he mutters, mostly to Nathan.

Seth grips the sides of the lectern as if to steady himself. Amber pats Noah’s shoulder briefly before standing up to offer her hand to Seth. She wraps her free arm around his shoulder as they sit down.

The mass proceeds and the priest swings the censer next to Molly’s casket to bless it. An altar server eventually takes it from him and continues swinging it as Seth, among others, accompanies the casket toward the front door. When the smoke hits Pickles’ nose, too close to the aisle to avoid it, he starts coughing and can’t stop.

Nathan clenches his hand at his side several times before putting it on Pickles’ back. The effort does nothing to help, technically, but it gets Pickles to grab his inhaler and breathe again.

* * *

“Your dad drowned,” Nathan says, between spoonfuls of melting soft serve. “You go talk to him.”

Toki balks as everybody else at the table stares at him. Dethklok, Charles, Amber, and Noah have gathered into two tables shoved together. Pickles and Seth are at a booth on the far side of the Dairy Queen; not honestly that far away, but the distance seems too great to cross from Toki’s perspective. “I can’ts do it, Nathans. Please don’t makes me do it.”

“You have the most in common. _I can’t do it._ My parents aren’t dead.”

Murderface breaks off the tines from a plastic fork. “Maybe I should talk to him. My parents have been dead since I was born, and I’m doing just fine.” He flicks bits of white plastic onto the floor. 

Amber watches them hit the tile and frowns. “I don’t think any of you guys should say anything. Not until you go home.”

“Why’s not?” Skwisgaar asks. He’s restless without a guitar to fiddle with, left to entertain himself by dipping cold french fries into the chili that fell off his hot dog. “I don’ts sees what ams such a big deals? I hates my moms. Psh. Pickle hates his moms. So’s what?”

Amber wipes a smudge of chocolate syrup off Noah’s cheek and gives Skwisgaar a look. “I’m saying, this did a number on Seth and even if Pickles says he hates her, he’s probably still going to be fucked up about it.” She raises her hands in a gesture of _what can you do?_ “My parents are in a retirement home in Madison, so I’m just doing my best, here.”

Toki scrutinizes promotional window-cling signage. “What ams a Dilly Bar?”

“It sounds likes it ams a Dildo Bar.” Skwisgaar snorts. “Cans you even imagines that?”

“So it’s like a bar full of people who are dildos, or is it a bar where you order dildos?” Nathan asks. “Sounds fuckin’ shitty to me. That’s a shitty bar.”

“What if the bars itselfs ams shaped like a dildo?”

Murderface snaps the handle of the fork in half. “Nobody’s going to construct that. There’s no way you could convince an architect to design something that fucking stupid.”

Nathan rolls his eyes. “Says the genius who came up with the Super Tits Candy Snake Project.”

“I still say that had a lot of promise!”

Charles looks up from his tablet. “Toki, it’s a children’s ice cream bar. There’s a no sugar added version you could have if you’ve been watching your diet today.”

“I’s gonna go get ones.”

“Noah, honey, why don’t you go with Mr. Wartooth? Tell the nice lady at the counter that it’s your birthday and you can have another ice cream.”

Noah looks confused. “But it’s not my birthday.”

“Well, they don’t know that, do they?” Amber puts a finger over her lips. “Shh.”

“I, ah, think you need a coupon to redeem... nevermind.” Charles sighs to himself and tries to focus.

Amber grabs Noah’s arm gently and whispers into his ear. “If they don’t give you an ice cream, sweetheart, tell them your grandma died this week. That’ll do it.” She kisses the top of his head. “Go follow Mr. Toki!”

Toki looks conflicted about dealing with a child but doesn’t say anything.

“I still think it’s a dumb idea,” Nathan adds, after the fact. “Dildo bar.”

* * *

“I heard her die, Pickles. I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to fuckin’ do with myself after that.”

Pickles stares at Seth’s sandwich, which is specifically a FlameThrower® Chicken Sandwich™ that has an additional beef patty stacked inside it, and has been sitting half-eaten for at least twenty minutes. His fries are untouched.

“I’ve called her every day since dad died, you know? Every fuckin’ day, twelve noon on the dot, on my lunch break. Mom’s usually making a late dinner, it’d be like eight for her. Skype lets you talk for cheap.”

There’s a glob of sauce on Seth’s tuxedo, on the opposite lapel as the bloodstain. Now they match.

“Except this time, she was coming home from some event her friends hosted. She hadn’t gotten out of the house much, since, y’know, dad’s heart attack. Not other than being at the hospital. So this was her puttin’ herself back out there.”

Seth takes a very loud sip of his Coke, or what’s left of it. The remaining soda has long since been diluted by the melting ice. He shakes the cup.

“She’s telling me about her friends at this coffee shop they all went to, and Mrs. Cook, you remember her? She babysat us that one time but didn’t want to again. Mom’s telling me about Mrs. Cook’s property line, and this neighbor who built a shed over the property line by fourteen inches, can you believe this shit? They’re in court over it. But hell, I’ve been to court for way less.”

“I’m sure you have.”

Seth moves the straw in and out of the lid. It makes an irritating sound. Pickles wishes Seth would stop fidgeting.

“So she’s coming back across the bridge on 4th.” Seth looks over his shoulder, where he can just barely see the Wisconsin River through the restaurant window. “Right out there. It’s fuckin’ surreal. A fuckin’ week ago, right over there, fuckin’...”

Pickles follows Seth’s gaze to the window. It’s late in the day, and the sun is setting through what trees haven’t been cleared over the years.

“You know they closed our grade school? I mean, they built a new one, but they razed the old building a few years ago. It probably needed to go, to tell you the truth. I wish you could’ve seen it before they tore it to shit.”

Pickles presses the pad of his finger into the bread crumbs left from his chicken strips. “Seth, what happened?”

Seth scrunches up his nose and holds his breath. He swallows, shakes his drink cup again, and sets it back down. “Fuckin’ semi. You know how fucking shitty that guardrail is. Fuckin’ pathetic. Didn’t do jack shit to help, and that bridge is so goddamn narrow.”

“Jesus, dude.”

“She loved that SUV. Loved it. And it fuckin’ flipped, it’s fuckin’ top-heavy. Rollover rating didn’t mean jack shit in the end. I don’t have to tell you this shit. She’s got me on speakerphone, so I hear her scream when the truck hit her. Driver fell asleep at the wheel, they said. Been awake for two days straight. Not her fault, they said. Felt fuckin’ awful. Inconsolable, or whatever, but that doesn’t fuckin’ bring mom back, does it?”

Seth starts blinking a lot. He takes a deep breath. “Mom started screaming. I could hear the fuckin’ impact, all that metal scraping on shit. Heard the car hit the water, and I’m yelling too, now, so...” He rubs at his forehead and his eyes with the heel of his palm. “Then it’s just water. Gurgling noises, and the call dropped. Lost the data connection. I don’t think the phone died, not entirely, but you know mom doesn’t know shit about getting waterproof phones.”

Pickles stares at Seth’s sandwich. The sauce has soaked into the bun. The pepperjack cheese is greasy, melted, and translucent.

“I’ll be fuckin’ straight with you, I don’t really know what else I heard. I was freaking my fucking shit out. I dunno what the fuck I was gonna do from Sydney. I can’t fuckin’ call 911 from Australia. Doesn’t work like that. So I’m panicking, and Googling shit, tryin’ to figure out how to dial emergency services in Wisconsin while I’m on another _fucking_ continent.”

Murderface knocks a napkin dispenser onto the floor, and it’s anyone’s guess if it’s intentional or accidental. Pickles and Seth look over at the source of the noise. 

Amber avoids making eye contact with them. Toki doesn’t.

“They had to get help from out of town to get the car pulled out of the river. We couldn’t have open casket anything. Amber and I, y’know, we got a bereavement rate to fly us all up the next day. We’re staying at the Rodeway. I dunno how long, either, because there’s so much fucking paperwork to do. Mom had been working on everything from dad’s final arrangements, but I’m the fuckin’ executor of the estate. I’m the fuckin’ executor and I don’t even know where to fuckin’ start. I don’t know where mom left off and I can’t fuckin’ _ask her_.”

Pickles takes the lid off his drink. Droplets of condensation fall onto the table. He shifts his weight to remove a flask from his back pocket and empties its contents into his Diet Coke. Vodka has always been there for him, through thick and thin.

“Everything that needs doing has to be done on fuckin’ location. I don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to get this shit done from home.” Seth picks at the edge of his cup lid until the plastic splits and twists beneath his fingers. He laughs. “Maybe I should go get the fuckin’ all-in-one fax machine, huh? Fuckin’ bureaucracy. They all want shit faxed to them.”

Pickles sips directly from the paper cup. The edge tastes waxy, but it’s the least of his worries if it’ll keep his buzz going. He watches as Seth grabs a napkin and blows his nose into it.

“And what the fuck am I supposed to do with the house? Sell it? Fuckin’ run an estate sale from nine thousand goddamn miles away? Fuckin’ overlook fuckin’ paperwork dad hid in his goddamn sock drawer about investments he hid from mom? Fuckin’ find crap about mom’s affairs that she hid from dad?”

Seth snorts back a significant amount of mucus and puts a hand over his mouth. Pickles can see his throat moving, a telltale sign of impending nausea.

“I gotta go, I gotta—”

Seth abruptly abandons the booth and sprints for the bathroom. He keeps his palm clamped over his mouth until he makes it through the door and braces his hands on the sink. With closed eyes, he breathes heavily, raggedly, and tries to fight back the wave of nausea that creeps up on him. He swallows, again and again, bile rising into his mouth. He spits into the sink and watches as it sits on top of the drain. He spits again, shivers, and vomits the parts of his sandwich he managed to choke down.

For the first time since the crash, he starts crying.

Pickles sits at the booth until he’s finished downing his Diet Vodka. He leaves the cup and what remains of their food and crosses the dining room to stand in front of the others.

“Charles, can I talk to you for a second?”

Charles pushes his glasses up on his nose, then scoots his chair back and stands up. “Would you prefer to speak with me outside?”

Pickles glances at the door, unable to meet the eyes of his bandmates or his sister-in-law. “Yeah. That’d be... yeah.”

Once they’re outside, Pickles shoves his hands into his pockets and stares at his shoes. “Y’know, my bro is havin’ a real fuckin’ tough time of this.”

Charles nods. “Anyone would, I’m sure.”

“He’s got... I dunno what really goes into it, but he’s got legal responsibility for our parents’ stuff, y’know? They didn’t name me for any of it. I’m not really surprised, and wouldn’t want to do it anyway, but Seth’s got...” Pickles sighs, aggravated, and turns his posture away from Charles. “Seth’s a piece of fucking shit, don’t misunderstand me, all right? But he’s not cut out to fuckin’ deal with this shit. He’s gonna fuck it all up. You and I both know that.”

Charles looks out at the parking lot. The employees parked around the back. The other vehicles are the Dethbus and Seth’s rental car. “I understand that he’s been named executor of their estate. If you authorize it, I could assist him in looking after the necessary, ah... matters, to be addressed.”

“Yeah. That’d be... that’d be good.”

Charles nods.

“That’s, um.” Pickles swallows heavily. “Thanks.”

Charles gives him a sympathetic smile. “That’s what I’m here for.”

Pickles pulls a lighter and pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He takes one for himself, then offers the box to Charles. “Want one?”

“I quit, actually.”

The Wisconsin River catches the rich warmth of sunset. Occasionally, someone drives past, but cars are few and far between.

Pickles takes a long drag and holds it before exhaling through his nose. “Okay. Just bein’ polite.”

“Thank you anyway.”

A quiet moment passes between them. Charles eventually heads back inside the restaurant, but not before patting Pickles’ shoulder—reassuring, but not patronizing.

Pickles stands alone long enough to finish his cigarette. He drops it to the pavement and stubs it out with his shoe.

He pulls the pack out again as Seth steps outside. His face is red from washing it in the Dairy Queen bathroom sink and drying his skin with unforgivably rough paper towels. His breath is stale despite rinsing and spitting water more times than he could count.

“Your lawyer said he’d help me with putting mom’s affairs in order.”

Pickles holds his unlit cigarette in the corner of his mouth, lights it, and inhales. He holds it between his fingers and breathes out slowly. “Yeah.”

“Can I have one of those?”

Pickles shrugs and offers him the pack. Seth pulls out a cigarette and holds it between his lips. He gestures for the lighter. Pickles lights the cigarette for for him.

Seth leans back against the window that’s advertising Dilly Bars. “Takes a huge fuckin’ weight off my shoulders, I gotta tell ya.”

Pickles shrugs again and feels somewhat useless. “Y’know, he’s good at what he does.”

“Heh, well. That’s why you keep him around, right?”

Pickles briefly considers telling Seth about when he and Charles were designing a coffin for Pickles’ own impending burial. He thinks about the shaky video footage he found weeks later while sober and destroyed while shitfaced. He thinks about the amusement park he won’t visit again, thanks to too many unpleasant memories attached to its location. 

He doesn’t bring it up, after all.

Seth exhales smoke through his mouth. Pickles thinks it’s pretentious, like he’s trying to be motherfucking Gandalf. “You wanna take a walk?”

Guilt and fear settle at the nape of Pickles’ neck. Walks with Seth as a kid meant someone was going to take his pocket money, or force him to prod dead animals with a stick. He ignores his involuntary reaction and nods. “All right. Sure.”

The last vestiges of sunlight set over the Wisconsin River as Pickles and Seth make their way up 4th, just a few blocks from the Dairy Queen. The blue guardrail has flecks of paint from Molly’s car, scraped red across the cerulean like it’s someone’s amateur art project. Something edgy, something to claim as abstract when it was created and completed an hour before it was due.

“It hasn’t really sunk in yet,” Seth says. “Fuck, that’s a morbid choice of words, wasn’t it? Fuck me. Fuck all of this.”

He leans on the guardrail, stares out over the river he threw rocks into as a child and beer cans into as a teenager. Now, at 44, he throws his cigarette butt into it.

Pickles throws his cigarette in after Seth’s and watches as it breaks the surface. His own landed further out, he notes. He’d almost call it a victory, if everything else wasn’t so goddamn depressing.

“She wanted to sell that SUV, Pickles. She was trying to let go of the past, right? Especially after dad... yeah, y’know, like. Stop dwelling so much. Get a fresh start, but the SUV reminded her of our old van, the van she took us to school in back in the fuckin’ day. Didn’t want to part with it. Terrible gas mileage. Didn’t want to really... I mean I’m not a fuckin’ psychologist, but that’s some empty nester shit, right? With me movin’ out. I’ve been thinking, what if I hadn’t moved out? What if me and Amber had stayed here in town, sent Noah to the grade school you and I went to, new building and all. What if we could see mom every day, instead of once a month?”

The September sun has dropped below the horizon at last. Pickles shivers, cut off sleeves useless against the chill. “You can’t blame yourself, dude. You needed that job.”

Seth starts to say something but cuts himself off. He glances at Pickles, at how his brother’s arms are curled tight around his own rib cage, and steps back to shrug out of his tuxedo jacket. “Hey.” He hands the crumpled garment to Pickles. “Don’t fuckin’ stand there like some sad fuckin’ Dickens orphan.”

Pickles meets his eyes for a brief moment, looks down at the jacket, and takes it. He pulls it on, and it’s slightly too big, but only just. It smells like weed and the ‘flamethrower’ sauce from his sandwich. Seth has bigger shoulders but doesn’t have a beer gut. He wonders if Seth’s tuxedo was ever tailored in the first place.

“We’re both fuckin’ Dickens orphans now, aren’t we?” Pickles spots a lotto ticket on the ground. He toes it off the edge of the bridge.

Seth laughs. “Please sir, can I have another hit?”

Pickles watches the scratch & win card float away before eventually saturating and sinking. When he looks back to Seth, his brother is crying again.

“You don’t know what that means to me, dude,” he starts. Seth sniffs almost violently, and spits into the river. “That you’re gonna get me help for settling all the legal bullshit. I didn’t know what the fuck I was gonna do. I can’t make my wife and kid live in a hotel for month after month until that shit gets settled.”

Pickles looks out on the water and tries to imagine where it was exactly that Molly’s car went under. He wonders what they did with the vehicle.

“Mom loved you, you know. I know she was the fuckin’ worst at making that clear, but she did. So don’t...” Seth lets out a shuddering breath. “Don’t ever think she didn’t.” He wipes at his eyes with his shirt sleeve, with a cuff that isn’t properly fitted to the length of his arm.

Pickles swallows a few times, says nothing, and reaches over to take Seth’s hand into his own.

Seth doesn’t say anything, either, but he doesn’t let go.


End file.
